Q: What is energy? What is “pure energy” like?

Physicist: Unfortunately, “pure energy” isn’t really a thing. Whenever you hear someone talking about something or other being “turned into pure energy”, you’re listening to someone who could stand to be a little more specific about what kind of energy. And whenever you hear someone talking about something being “made of pure energy”, you’re probably listening to someone who’s mistaken.

“Pure energy” shows up a lot in fiction, and most sci-fi/fantasy fans have some notion of what it’s like, but it isn’t a thing you’ll find in reality.

Energy comes in a hell of a lot of forms, but they’re all pretty mundane. For example, when “energy is released” in an explosion (most explosions) that energy mostly takes the form of kinetic energy (things moving and heat). Light is about the closest anything comes to being pure energy, but it’s not pure energy so much as it’s one of the several kinds of energy that isn’t tied up in matter. It’s “matterless”, sure, but that doesn’t mean that electromagnetic fields (light) are any closer to being pure than, say, gravity fields (another, very different, massless form of energy). “Pure” energy: nope. Some form of energy without matter: that happens.

So, energy can change from one form into another into another into another, etc., but the question remains: what is energy? The answer to that is a little unsatisfying.

There’s this quantity, that takes a lot of forms (physical movement, electromagnetic fields, being physically high in a gravitational well, chemical potential, etc., etc.). We can measure each of them, and we know that the total value between all of the various forms stays constant, and just like every other every constant, measurable thing it gets a name; energy.

If fusion in the Sun releases energy*, then the amount released is E = (Δm)c2 (where Δm is the change in mass between the hydrogen input and helium output and c is the speed of light). If that energy travels from the Sun to the Earth as light, then each photon of that light carries E=hν (Planck’s constant times frequency), of it. If those photons then fall onto a solar panel, that light energy can be converted into electrical energy. If that electrical energy runs a motor, then the energy used is E = VIT (voltage times current times time). If that motor is used to compress a spring, then the energy stored in the spring is E=0.5kA2 (where k is a spring constant, and A is the distance it’s compressed). If that spring tosses a stone into the air, then at the top of its flight it will have converted all of that energy into gravitational potential, in the amount of E = mgh (mass of the stone times the acceleration of gravity times height). When it falls back to the ground that energy will become kinetic energy again, E=0.5mv2 (where m is the stone’s mass and v is its velocity). If that stone falls into water and stirs it up, then the water will heat up by an amount given by E = C(ΔT) (where C is the heat capacity of water, and ΔT is the change in temperature).

The “same energy” is being used at every stage of this example (assuming perfect efficiency). But there’s no “carry through” that makes it from the beginning to the end. The only thing that really stays the same is the somewhat artificial constant number that we Humans (or more precisely: Newton) call “energy”.

When you want to explain the heck out of something that’s a little abstract, it’s best to leave it to professional bongo player, and sometimes-physicist Richard Feynman:

“There is a fact, or if you wish, a law governing all natural phenomena that are known to date. There is no known exception to this law – it is exact so far as we know. The law is called the conservation of energy. It states that there is a certain quantity, which we call “energy,” that does not change in the manifold changes that nature undergoes. That is a most abstract idea, because it is a mathematical principle; it says there is a numerical quantity which does not change when something happens. It is not a description of a mechanism, or anything concrete; it is a strange fact that when we calculate some number and when we finish watching nature go through her tricks and calculate the number again, it is the same. (Something like a bishop on a red square, and after a number of moves – details unknown – it is still on some red square. It is a law of this nature.)

(…) It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge of what energy ‘is’. We do not have a picture that energy comes in little blobs of a definite amount. It is not that way. It is an abstract thing in that it does not tell us the mechanism or the reason for the various formulas.” -Dick Feynman

*Every time energy is released from anything, that thing ends up weighing less. It’s just that outside of nuclear reactions (either fission or fusion) the change is so small that it’s not worth mentioning.

42 Responses to Q: What is energy? What is “pure energy” like?

What about in the first few seconds after the Big Bang where there was no matter. As far as I understand all the matter we see around us came from energy from the Big Bang. What sort of energy existed back then?

If the total energy contained within the universe is a constant, can we calculate that constant, what would it look like? Could we incorporate it into physics equations/are there physics equations that use a constant like this?

I am so sorry that I write so much. But then nobody has to read it. I am just so frustrated by the state of this world and the reasons why it is changing and needs to change. I need to change it because I feel that I have been severely abused by its belief system of death and disease, which are images of solidity. Solidity does not actually exist. Have the people that want to be the owners of the world confused us all by paying off the physicists and other teachers, so we will be their slaves? So all of the 99% of the people that don’t keep all the money to themselves can work and work and work and then lose it all? And then the owners of the banks that cause the failure don’t go to prison? Is that slavery or what? Isn’t that the essence of communism, but very well hidden? Now it is called credit cards, the need to be rich before death gets here. Because this world is all about hidden slavery, rather than teaching what gods we are literally, able to heal ourselves at a moments notice. Imagine how I felt when I learned this about people. It is in books.
We are all energy beings that constantly vibrate pictures that we believe to be true, in a holographic frequency domain of the implicate and explicit. And still people believe that murder and death of any kind exists.
It is slavery if the people don’t know that they could learn to vibrate so fast they could disappear, go through walls, leave the body at will. It is the spirit of the electron that does it. we are already spirit. That is the game. I am already vibrating what I am looking for. My mother and father is the energy source that vibrates as everything. We can never leave it. God is the electromagnetic energy units we breathe and eat and feel with. When that is put in that context then I understand it a whole lot better.
Who was the first person to see that all of our atoms are buzzing and spinning with electrons, and know what each other are doing in plasma? Then who was the first person to know that our bodies are full of these same atoms, pulsating and buzzing and spinning, picturing for us our images with electrons?
who was the first person to call it magic? Spinning electromagnetic energy is a lot of magic and we are it. So who is fabricating the belief in death when there is no death? Is it the people on this earth in particular? because I know there are a whole lot of dimensions everywhere and I don’t have to stay here. You can’t enslave me anymore.
I have healed myself many times and if I don’t leave this earth soon, I will continue to teach people that they are the magic of spinning electrons around every nucleus that exists. My mission on earth is to stop the rumors of solidity, which is causing all of the wars and torture I have experienced.
Almost every question I read has to do with the question of whether there is solidity or not. Is there existence or not? If we are solid, then how did we live so that we could die? But if we are spirit, then we fly. How fast do the electrons spin around the nucleus of every atom that exists? So fast that the electron cloud must be spirit. Without the spirit we would not exist. Without the implicate we would not exist.
So everybody everywhere!!!! Stop teaching solidity!!!! It is slowing torturing all of us.

I wish a trillion times that somebody would make up their minds. Is there solidity or is there not solidity? Because this whole earth is screwy because nobody can agree about anything all at once. Aren’t we supposed to be swimming as ONE like those quanta in that plasma? Hint , Hint Aren’t we exactly the quanta that compose us because we wish for them to? In a holographic frequency domain where everything is pulsating frequencies into pictures, we ARE the pictures. Aren’t we wishing ourselves into existence consistently millions of times a second, pulsating full of all those electromagnetic electrons and quanta? We are literally gods somebody said, but then how come I didn’t know it as a kid? That is a bad joke.
I was bullied and I acted out a lot. Then I was bullied more. If somebody told me I was here with a mission constantly with every pulsate of my electrons, then chances are there would have been nobody to hate me to begin with. Then I would have been a special being vibrating all that God vibrates. There would be no wars. And disease would be seen as the vibratory pulse that it is—pulsating into existence constantly as the pictures we constantly create of ourselves. We are gods. We don’t make the energy that pulses as everything, but we sure seem to take some of it to guide it, as if it is our own. But it will never be. We will always have to vibrate the same speed as the ONE energy that is the source of the energy, or we will go off balance. If Our series of waves and coils go off balance and our resonance with that source/God becomes off balance…then we call it disease, when it is really dis-ease. Dis-ease is the frequency of stress, vibrating a different speed than the energy source that is constantly creating us–in balance .
that is where people are confused. It is an illusion that there is a past and a future. all those pictures have faded away from this reality. They really do not exist. They are probable, but don’t have to be anymore. We can change those pictures and make our “past” different and then we can actually act as if we have changed into what we pictured as a future, rather than a past. Memories are pictures. They vibrate in a electromagnetic frequency domain.
But if a person takes that energy that is implicate and guides it, then it becomes explicit–it changes form from one set of frequencies to the next. From one dimension to the next, in and out. We pulsate in and out of different dimensions all the time.

People win Nobel awards for this information. Why do the school children not know that they are vibrating frequencies in a holographic frequency domain that is implicate and explicate in nature? Meaning that we are inward and outward of different frequencies all the time, right now, constantly. The Big Bang is right now with every pulsate of my energy units. That is what they are and we are full of them. They picture for us what we want. We are our own hologram decks like on Star Trek and that is the secret that nobody knows or doesn’t tell. Is it just good for the movies, or did I see recently that computer that creates out of flatness–3D form!!!
Nobody told me that ever. I was called stupid and ugly and a liar. Thanks a lot physicists. How many times do I have to think these things? I believe that I am an energy being that is holographic totally vibrating pictures consistently. That is my statement for when I leave this place. I may come back and try to tell someone about it, but who would I choose? I don’t know anybody. Because nobody rescued me as a child I did not bond with people. I have never had a best friend—yet I am trying to save everybody from their stresses. I read somewhere that I am ONE with everybody. What they vibrate I feel. It is resonance. Our oneness.

Energy is not a real thing? It is everything. It is the buzz in our ears. It is the wave that connects everything and makes everything ONE thing. If it weren’t a quantum reality spinning energy in and out of everything then we would not exist. Vibration exists.
Did someone not get it right? Weren’t there awards handed out for the quantum theory of everything? of waves? Rocks exist and they vibrate. Put their atoms into the collider. won’t you find spinning electrons? That is pure energy. Spinning electrons and quanta. They are all out there zooning around like an ocean. We breathe them.
If spinning electrons and quanta aren’t pure energy, then that means you are talking about something even smaller still. they already named quarks and muons, etc. Aren’t all of these pure energy? Why isn’t the spin of an electron pure energy? And how would you know? You can’t even see the electron. Are you saying God is this pure energy? And why isn’t everything pure energy when everything vibrates God?
Now there is a question.
If we weren’t quantum we would not vibrate. We totally vibrate 100% energy of the frequency domain that we come from. The implicate order says Pribram. Isn’t that saying that we are revealed/manifested from a vibration that vibrates so differently than this one that we have forgotten that it exists? Yet people are told that it is bad to commit suicide and to murder. But people are frequencies from the frequency domain that we vibrate in.
How can you have it both ways? Are we frequencies of powerful energies at least as strong and as enduring as the quanta that come together to form us?

Phyllis’ comment is a good illustration of how common definitions of terms like “energy” or “entropy” differ from the scientific meaning of such terms. Context clearly matters. Energy can be thought of as a metaphor for describing something we see in nature, and it can be useful to use the term, metaphorically, in other areas of interest. It would be interesting to know the history of such terms as ‘energy’, and where bifurcations in meaning may have taken place. Was it a popular term, adopted by Science at some point? Or could the term be seen as having been refined in the pursuit of Science and then adopted as a common metaphor? Maybe both?

Since at the core of reality is a wave, the wave a photon makes as it shoots across the universe, then why is this not pure energy? Are you looking for the thought that caused the photon to shoot off across the universe? Is the thought the pure energy you are looking for?
I like the language that physicists use when they talk about quantum mechanics. I like the language of the physicists that win awards. Their language is the language of gurus and Buddhists and Hindus when they talk about the behavior of quanta as being eternal and miraculous and weird. The behavior of quanta and electrons is what I am interested in. You are interested in the math.
Energy may be a common metaphor, but only because it is not thought of as being alive and eternal and magical and holographic. People cannot make pure energy. It already exists in our electromagnetic atmosphere. We breathe it. We live in an ocean of it. There is not space between us. Space is charged with quanta. We live in a grid of quanta. The grid is pure energy itself. Quanta are pure energy. The wave is pure energy. Energy is movement and causes nothing to be solid. We live in God’s mind. God’s mind vibrates as us.
That is what physicists say that have seen quanta move in plasmas. Higgs Boson anyone?

@phyllis McLemore
I understand the truth of your message. Email me at ”[email protected]” some time if you still pay attention to this page.

As for the original article, I have one thing that just gets me. If there are different forms of energy that go around randomly transferring into other forms of energy, how does it produce such complex and intelligent patterns (Fibonacci spiral, etc.) everywhere in the universe, yet energy is not considered intelligent….I say that because science says the universe happened by chance. But computers don’t build themselves so how can life without a subtle intelligence that influences every aspect of it.

I think that science is a great tool but it is trying to understand something that is creative from a logical point of view.
You can’t understand it until you experience it yourself either.

The conscious ego rises, indeed, out of the “unconscious,” but the unconscious, being the creator of the ego, is necessarily far more conscious than its offspring. The ego is simply not conscious enough to be able to contain the vast knowledge that belongs to the inner conscious self from which it springs.
It is this inner self, out of massive knowledge and the unlimited scope of its consciousness, that forms this physical world and provides stimuli to keep the outer ego constantly at the job of awareness. It is the inner self, here termed the inner ego, that organizes, initiates, projects, and controls the EE (electromagnetic energy) units of which we have been speaking, transforming energy into objects, into matter.
The energy of this inner self used by it to form from itself–from inner experience–a material counterpart in which the outer ego then can act out its role. The outer ego then acts out a play that the inner self has written. This is not to say that the outer ego is a puppet. It is to say that the outer ego is far less conscious than the inner ego, that its perception is less, that it is far less stable though it makes great pretense of stability, that it springs from the inner self and is therefore less, rather than more, aware.
The outer ego is spoon-fed, being given only those feelings and emotions, only that data, that it can handle. This data is presented to it in a highly specialized manner, usually in terms of information picked up by the physical senses.
IT IS THIS INNER SELF, OUT OF MASSIVE KNOWLEDGE AND THE UNLIMITED SCOPE OF ITS CONSCIOUSNESS, THAT FORMS THIS WORLD….IT IS THE INNER SELF, HERE TERMED THE INNER EGO, THAT ORGANIZES, INITIATES, PROJECTS, AND CONTROLS THE EE UNITS……….
It organizes, initiates, projects and controls the EE units we are made of. We are not solid.
TRANSFORMING ENERGY INTO OBJECTS, INTO MATTER.

WOW!! get a grip on that. This is what people call God, All That Is, magic and miracles. This science fiction creature which has massive knowledge and unlimited scope transforms energy into objects, into matter. We are constantly being organized, intiated, projected and controled by an energy being vaster than we are. And apparently, it is the self that IS us, except on this planet the dumbing down of society has won, mostly. That is why our egos seem so stupid. People teach each other that they are stupid. This whole society is set up to teach stupidity, the whole time quantum physics says that this field of waves does not stop until there is a look upon these waves, a stare, and intent and then POOF!! there is a frequency that can be measured on any hospital screen. People are literally frequencies because there has been intent within this field of waves that IS the projection, IS the EE units. The energy of Intent/want/desire itself is what pulls/magnetizes these EE units to come together to form–US. This look or intent or desire literally bunches up this field of waves. On the internet site wisc.edu under the physics department and wave/particle duality you can find a picture of a wave and the particle/wave/light point that rides on it when it bunches up.
We are holographic energy wave packet projections, literally being projected from another frequency domain where this inner ego lives/vibrates–at that non local level where we are all one energy/being–which is where our electrons vibrate/oscillate. It is all a game and we are the players–very much like the players of a video game, but we are conscious of the game (except in this world where people are taught they are solid and then die).
A few more books:
The Holographic Universe by Talbot
Hands of Light by Barbara Brennan
Psychic Healers by St. Clair
Healers and the Healing Process by Meeks
Healing Yourself by Rossman
An Ascension Handbook by Tony Stubbs

i realize the significance of philosophical and metaphysical debate around this topic, but the question was asked from a physics (scientific) perspective, so can we stick to the relevant please?

that said, it is easiest to think of energy as a currency of physical action – the more energy there is, the more ‘action’ can take place. action therefore could be said to be the exchange of energy between the locally available forms and residence.

I have a question regarding a personal experience. I would have been skeptical if I hadn’t been a witness. Soon after my grandmother’s death my father and I returned to her home to retrieve personal items for the upcoming funeral. Once inside we separated until my father called to me and I followed his voice into kitchen. “Erie isn’t it?” He said as my eyes followed his glance to the hanging (battery operated) clock. The short hand was still and pointing directly to the number 2, while the second hand flickered , vacillating between the numbers 46 & 47, the recorded time of my grandmother’s death. I have since wondered about many physical and mathematical possibilities. Do you have any explanations or theories about this phenomena?
Thank you for the time and consideration

@lAura Ketron
breaking it down, clocks (analogue) would likely behave this way once the battery runs out. had a few do just that. the question comes down to timing – is it a coincidence that it happened at just the right time?

maybe. back-of-envelope, there are 86400 seconds in a day – of these, one specific combination of the hour hand and second hand (or minute hand i suspect would have been noteworthy too, if it had stopped at 46-47) occurred. for that hour, there were 60 times the second hand could have stopped in the right place, and 60 times the minute hand could have stopped at the right place (60 seconds between minutes 46-47; 60 minutes with second hand on 46-47).

at any given time of day, there was 1/24 chance the hour would coincide. in that hour, there are 3600 seconds / positions, and of those, 120 would coincide. so all in all there is a 1 in 720 possibility that this happened purely by chance, (1 in 360 if you don’t count 24 hour time). this is not a large number, so it is quite possible that it happened solely by chance. problem is we notice things that coincide far more often than when they don’t, which is a type of cognitive bias.

Where did energy come from then? If energy can neither be created nor destroyed, that would imply energy has always existed. Wouldn’t that make energy an infinite quantity since it would have no starting nor finishing point. Isn’t that somewhat paradoxical. Also I’ve often seen quoted that during black holes information is lost doesn’t that violate the laws of conservation of energy.

This “answering mathemetician-physicist”is just amazing in his perceptiveness. His fluid integration of the factual/mathematical, conceptual, logical, even quasi-philosophical in such colorful, poowerfully metaphorical, and humorous/”down-to-earth” language is truly a manifestation of a profoundly keen intellect. I really feel blessed to be able to read what he has written on a variety of topics. I’m sure he’s not absolutely 100 percent correct in every last word he “utters” in every last article but who cares?! I’m also sure he’s pretty darn close and I’m 100 percent sure I wouldn’t know the difference! Totally fantastic and really a public service, in my opinion, that is very commendable and admirable.

Are your eyes dim? Do you not see? Since Galileo the world of physics has confined its domain to that of the physical. By its very own rules anything outside of that it has no authority to talk or coment on other than informally. By this constraint it has gained, but it will also suffer.
What is reality? When we reduce objects to atoms and atoms to almost massless fundamental particles what do we have left? Does it not look like the trend of reductionism is showing us that all is energy? Then what is this so called ‘energy’?
The concept of energy does not exist without the concept of time, but the problem is that , as Einstein put it time is “stuff made in clocks”, it is abstract. So then is energy. An abstraction is a generalisation of something that is objective, so what is it that is the object of our research then? Is there anything in our fundamental discoveries that has a dynamic aspect to it? Why yes – Paul Dirac discovered that the electron has spin and the electron is fundamental and it is, as far as we can tell, eternal. So, we should ask ourselves, since this spin is a feature of the make up of all constructions up to the level of the atom is it at all possible that this spin is the cause of time, energy, forces?
Looking at the question generally the answer has to be yes because the spin is four dimensional. We live in a 3 dimensional (spatially) world so we are constrained to see the atom as a 3D phenomenon. When I say ‘we live in’ what I mean is that we too are apparently made of 3D atoms, so we will react to other external atoms accordingly. Look I’m sorry I’m not going to give you everything here it would take too long so it will just be teasers I’m afraid. Let us take the starting point of the Paul Dirac’s electron: a four dimensional rotation of zero extent: does anyone know any different? From this ‘particle’ and its cousins we are able to create a 3D atom WITH extent. I.e. from pure PROCESS (in 4D) to extent in 3D with the appearance of a connected 4th dimension of dynamic time.
It is 3 dimensional extent which is the illusion. It is the abstract understanding we have put on time which is non-existent. The fundamental is ‘process’, it is what goes on in the eternal electron. This process gives rise to the appearance of something dynamic which we try to characterise as time.
Sorry for the teaser, I will be formalising this as I get ‘time’.

I’m not a mathematician or physicist, But those “theories” about pure energy and spiritual beings are absolute nonsense. Computers/Phones on which these “spiritual” comments are being written are made with the help of science (laws of physics, mathematical calculations), they didn’t come from spirituality or sacred focused mind.

I’ve read articles stating that atoms are made of pure energy vortexes, but we know that energy is just a property that MUST be tied to some kind of objects/matter.

I’m quite fascinated with the theory of information, that universe is computing at a quantum scale, there are only bits of information being processed every second, that’s the same process our DNA evolved!

If “pure energy” cannot exist then what form did it take in the earliest moments of the Big Bang?

If temperature is the result of particles (i.e. highly condensed and structured energy) in motion, then how can the particle-less early universe be said to have had a temperature of some enormously big number of degrees?

These are the kinds of obvious question that occur to the intelligent Layman (I have degrees in Maths and Biology) but that popular books on science gloss over, or do not consider at all.

Come to think of it, I have yet to see a satisfying explanation in print of the much simpler question of why the temperature gets lower as you climb a mountain. Everything I have seen and read is either incomprehensible or logically flawed!!

Tom Rose: “If “pure energy” cannot exist then what form did it take in the earliest moments of the Big Bang?”

It had to be kinetic energy since after the Big bang was a “radiative” period (movement).

“If temperature is the result of particles (i.e. highly condensed and structured energy) in motion, then how can the particle-less early universe be said to have had a temperature of some enormously big number of degrees?”

During the “radiative” period, there was a particle that manifested itself. It was the massless neutrino. That particle was the only one existing at the time to manifest movement.

We have to consider the fact that the Big bang didn’t happen at time = zero. Since the Big bang is the appearance of our tridimensional universe, which means a “volume”, this volume couldn’t have a smaller diameter than the length of Planck (10^-35 m). So the Big bang happened at Planck’s time (10^-43 sec after time – zero).

It was during that period of 10^-43 sec called Planck’s era that kinetic energy developed itself to “explode” at Planck’s time.

I’m presuming a site like this and its crowd-sourced helpers err on and presume good faith on the part of the seekers. So, I’m confused/perplexed/curious/worried when people draw a distinction between the common understanding/use of the term “energy” and a more esoteric or rarified “scientific” term. It this distinction a function of defining its various states and behaviors in those states more than its common origin? When we harvest the biosphere, are we not harvesting different manifestations of the same ultimate source? When we use our body to work or drive a car or eat chocolate or pay attention to anything, aren’t we all using energy from the big bang, and usually from our own sun? Isn’t every transaction conducted by humans powered by the big bang or the sun? Or am I wrong? English degree from a regional religious college, here.

The energy of the sun originated from the Big bang. All energy observed today originated from the Big bang… except for one portion which is the energy that produced inflation at 10^-33 sec after time = zero. That energy added itself to the energy manifested at 10^-43 sec after time zero.

That second portion of energy brought with itself the space geodesic that would develop in space deformation (the source of gravity). The particle involved was the gluon whose geodesic sends everything to a “center point” instead of everywhere (all points). We describe it as a “gluing” result. “Gravity” is simply the contrary motion of “expansion”.

No offense for the commenters, but what you expose here and the what science suggests or has discovered is completely incompatible. I mean, c’mon. We know death exists. Any “out of body” experience is a mere psychological phenomenon that can be triggered by different situations. Also, energy cannot be a pure thing because it is a property. That is what energy is. A property. So, no, the spinning of electrons is not pure energy. It is kinetic energy, because is the energy of the electron as it spins — moves.

As for the Big Bang questions, let me propose an answer:

According to relativistic-quantum theories, the Big Bang is a singularity point of infinite density. What kind of energy existed in the Big Bang? Energy is the capacity of a system to do work. If we were to measure the energy of the singularity point previous to the Big Bang — theoretically speaking, obviously, since we can’t measure energy previous to the Big Bang just yet — then this energy would be defined as the amount of work that this singularity is capable of doing. That energy would probably be equivalent to that of the entire universe. We can’t measure the energy of the entire universe. It’s not even really possibly to know how big the universe — our knowledge is limited to the observable universe. So, we can only know what the energy of that Big Bang singularity “is” like, but we can’t imaginably measure it.

I am just reading Angel’s comment of November 30:
“this energy would be defined as the amount of work that this singularity is capable of doing. That energy would probably be equivalent to that of the entire universe. We can’t measure the energy of the entire universe. It’s not even really possibly to know how big the universe — our knowledge is limited to the observable universe. So, we can only know what the energy of that Big Bang singularity “is” like, but we can’t imaginably measure it.”
As you say, our bodies fail, but are these things true:
1) Are our living bodies “living” because we consume/transform a portion of the energy “equivalent to that of the entire universe?”
2) Is consumption/transformation of that original energy (many times removed) a diversion of entropy (to some other part of the universe)?
3) Does consumption that enables the temporary complex organization of particles temporarily divert entropy, or the laws of the universe for a “living” form to “live”?
If not, stop me now.
If so:
4) Does access to surplus energy mean we have the capacity to be intentional with the powers and properties of the universe? Perhaps it IS metaphysical if my premise (points 1-3) are not incoherent or wrong somewhere 🙂
Thanks to anyone who answers this.

To Slick rick:
Couple things. 1. There isn’t really much in the way of answers as to where the energy came from in the first place. Perhaps it has always been no one knows and there is likely no way for anyone to ever know. Even with the most amazing telescope in the universe ever invented or ever will be invented even if we could see the light that still exists that hasn’t reached us yet or is too dim to see even with cosmic background radiation there is no way to see past the big bang. This is why metaphysics and religion gets brought into this arena. There is no way we will ever know so we imagine and try to use our ultimately simple brains to understand things that are just completely beyond us. As an experiment think about the concept of infinity. Because it is an abstract idea that is mirrored in the real world it is next to impossible to wrap your head around. Nothingness is a similar issue. The absence of absolutely anything is just not something you could ever comprehend. Your not wired to but you are wired to fill in the gap with things you do understand to try to cope with the lack of understanding. In the example of nothingness most people will imagine a never ending sea of white this however is not true because for it to be white there needs to be light and if there is light it’s not nothingness. You might say well then fine a sea of black well you have some other issues there like in order for something to be truly nothing you can not perceive it because the minute you perceive it it become something if only a physical property that you are perceiving. 2. Please understand information is an abstract concept again. Lights blinking on and off in a recognizable pattern is information. Your computer is proof of that. As would be lights blinking to binary or Morse code. In the example of say radio waves that get trapped in a black hole we are talking about EMF that has changes in things like it’s amplitude or it’s frequency that could be construed as information. So let’s say you have a radio wave that gets trapped by a black hole. Well it’s not going to have the power or energy to escape. Even if it’s an intelligent bit of information that could think for itself (bear with me I know how bad this is) and it actually tried to turn away from the singularity and escape all the energy that it is using would be converted into other forms of energy eventually leading into heat if not directly to heat. Eventually that energy would be all converted no more movement could be made and any mass that the information, which is actually it’s carrier wave, had would be pulled into the singularity adding to it’s mass and density and creating a larger (by really really tiny amounts) gravity profile. All the energy is still there in different forms either heat or electromagnetic forces or even potential energy stored in the mass. So no it does not contradict the law of conservation of energy.

To Tom Rose:
How is getting colder as you go up a mountain logically flawed? It’s all about air pressure on a mountain it is less meaning the heat energy is spread out.

To penny :

1. There is a lot of debate about what constitutes living and dead matter and no one really has a definition for it.

the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.

is the definition but there are things that would be considered dead that grow and reproduce so it’s really kinda gray area.
2. This isn’t how entropy works. For the topic of energy your thinking of thermodynamic entropy and it doesn’t fit within what you are talking about. It has to do with how heat transfers between molecules.
3. You seem to be thinking of Schrodinger paradox either way the issues that crop up with what you seem to be thinking come from the second law of thermodynamics however that has to do with an isolated system which living beings are not.

Either way your premise is very confusing and hard to follow. Angel was talking about the idea of potential energy. Thanks to the law of conservation of energy we know energy can’t be created or destroyed. That means that every bit of energy that is now ever was and ever will be is the same energy and all of it was at one point stored as potential energy in the singularity that was the big bang.

Many thanks, tourn 🙂 I agree I am unable to articulate my thoughts coherently on this topic, and that I’ve mixed up the terms, and yes, I was set on this path by Schrodinger’s What is Life?, and implications of the second law.

Professor Frank Lambert of Occidental College beautifully says what I would LIKE to say and understand, and I recommend his writing on entropy and the second law for any other hapless humanities types like me: http://shakespeare2ndlaw.oxy.edu/

Here is an excerpt from one piece intended for extreme non-scientists:

“Shakespeare speaks movingly and powerfully about our complex human relationships. His work ‘teem[s] with the most vital ideas about the inner development of man, showing the whole grandeur and misery of human existence.’ In contrast to Shakespeare’s symphony of contributions to an understanding of being human, facts and theories about the physical world like the second law may initially sound tinny and trivial. But every microsecond of our acquaintance with grandeur or with misery involves — and often is determined by — physical and chemical events outside of our bodies and inside them. Physical matter is not a trivial component of our being human, of being complex emotional and rational creatures. Externally, we may be daily both beset and delighted by natural objects and by artifacts; our lives may be straitened to desperation by simple impacts or in violent car accidents. Internally, the biochemistry of our bodies depends upon material molecules in palpable organs and plays a significant part in everyone’s inner (emotive) development — as well as being responsible for our continuing life.

“The importance of the second law of thermodynamics in our lives? When second law concepts are coupled with examples of the effect of activation energies on chemical and physical events, they become a Rosetta stone for interpreting all the matter-dependent happenings in life. They are the helix codes for the occurrence of physical events.”

Tourn, I really appreciate you taking the time to respond as you have. It wasn’t just Schrodinger’s use of the term “negative entropy,” but listening to Feynman’s lectures, when he concludes one of the earliest lectures with the remark about us being this complex combination of particles. Living things are open systems but what happens if a living system is unable to take energy from its environment? Being open does not in itself presume access to energy. If an open living system is prevented from accessing energy from its environment, it succumbs to … starvation? Is this a variation on entropy? I don’t mean to be woo woo or spiritual, but in fact the opposite: to be as reductionist as a person as ignorant as I am can possibly be, and then consider the implications. Is the body and the brain within it a physical object subject to the laws of thermodynamics, including the second law if it fails to secure energy from its environment? THANK YOU!!!

Everything would be easier if you consider that the universe is quantized, pixelated, and that everything, even energy, is made of information, and obviously ourselves also.
In a few words, matter and energy are programmed. As programmers cannot be part of the program, they are outside.

“…Everything would be easier if you consider that the universe is quantized…”
Indeed , everything would be easier . I’m sure some people agree with you. But some are still hooked up to the idea that if you give someone a hammer , everything starts to look like a nail.
Since we live in a digital age , everything seems to be information processing or IP.
Is anyone right ? And if so , who is right ?
Let’s put “…everything, even energy, is made of information…” under the microscope for a second.
Clearly there is information and there is information processing.
Energy and matter are clearly the same thing . E=mC² says exactly that.
Our mind is the information processing entity.
Everyone understands that nothing can “exist” if the information is not available.
All we get from our “sensory inputs” is information . There is no way to prove that anything other than information exists.
“Reality” is just information being processed by our minds.
But what it means to process information ? Where’s the information coming from ?
Is there a programmer ? A god, nature , universal consciousness or whatever other name we choose to call it ?
Apparently , processing information seems to be simply to simply attach meaning to it. For instance , a simple word , “one” , is nothing but information. Vibration ,frequencies . Some would assign a quantitative value , 1 as opposed to nothing or zero , some would assign the meaning of a person , human, etc.
What happened to the original information when meaning was assigned to it ? It just became more complex . The “programmer ” seems to be in this case , our mind, our consciousness.
If anyone remembers The Game of Life devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970 , proved how simple rules can give birth to such complex systems. Everything seems to go from simple to more complex. As if the information itself is evolving , expanding , becoming more complex.
Would it be completely senseless to assume that everything started with “to be or not to be” ? To exist or not to exist ?
This “reality” or “universe” we are so familiar with seems to have this binary property. Nothing makes any sense unless there’s an opposite.
What meaning would have the light without darkness or absence of light ? Life without death ? Existence without non-existence ? Something without nothing ?
Logically , in order for “non-existence ” to make any sense, something Must exist !
Information doesn’t seem to make any sense if it is less than binary.
Following that logic , this “verse” , “universe” , “reality ” , had no choice but to exist in order for non-existence to make any sense.
Same scenario for information processing. Non-processed information only makes sense as opposed to processed information. Simple as opposed to complex.
Is this such an abstract idea ?
Maybe we are not so different from one another , maybe we are ,after all, multiple instances of the same consciousness , going trough different experiences at the same time.